The demand for increased areal densities in memory devices is typically addressed by decreasing the size of magnetic storage elements. Decreasing the size of the magnetic storage elements can result in a decrease in thermal stability of the storage elements. To store data reliably for very small bit sizes of a magnetic recording medium, for example, the magnetic medium is typically made of a material with a very high coercivity. At some capacity point, the bit size is so small and the coercivity is so high that the magnetic field needed for writing data cannot be made strong enough to permanently affect the data, and data can no longer be written to the recording medium.
Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) is a promising approach for breaking the areal density limit by temporarily and locally changing the coercivity of the magnetic storage medium by raising the temperature above the Curie temperature. At temperatures above the Curie temperature, the magnetic recording medium effectively loses coercivity and a realistically achievable magnetic write field, often referred to as the switching field, can be generated to write data to the recording medium.